Zimbabwe intends to seek the extradition of an American dentist who killed a lion that was lured out of a national park and shot with a bow and a gun, and the process has already begun, a Cabinet minister said Friday.

In the Zimbabwean government's first official comment on the killing of Cecil the lion, the environment, water and climate minister lashed out at Walter James Palmer, accusing him even of trying to hurt Zimbabwe's image.

Turkey on Tuesday launched its heaviest assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq since commencing its airstrike campaign against them last week. The overnight assault started shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish-Kurdish peace process has become impossible.

The strikes hit six Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets, including shelters and arms depots near the group's mountainous stronghold in Qandil, according to a statement from Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's office.

Authorities on the small Indian Ocean island of Reunion are investigating whether a piece of a jet that washed ashore is part of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared 16 months ago.

No sign has been seen of the missing jet, or the 239 people aboard, since it took off March 8, 2014, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, en route to Beijing. The plane is believed to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean, far off of Australia's western coast, but 16 months of intensive searching has not yielded any evidence of a crash site.

Two Zimbabweans arrested for illegally hunting a protected lion named Cecil were in court on Wednesday as anger escalated over the kill by Walter James Palmer, an American dentist.

"If, as has been reported, this dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property ... he needs to be extradited, charged and, preferably, hanged," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said in a statement Wednesday. The statement, emailed to The Associated Press, came from Ingrid Newkirk, the president of the animal rights organization.

Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing complex in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister's office announced the "immediate construction" of some 300 new units at another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500 new units in east Jerusalem.

The move, which is likely to draw international rebuke, comes amid a standoff in Beit El settlement, about 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of Jerusalem.